[ComtedeMaistre]

Because Southerners are pioneers and not immigrants, they deserve to be described as "Native Americans". Southern culture and heritage, deserves as much respect as the Cherokee, Navajo, Comanche, Apache, and the Sioux cultures.

[mjp]

Southern identity is partly about celebrating the Anglo-Celtic culture, which is the core culture that existed in America at the time of the founding of America in 1776.

Virginia = Wessex

Southern backcountry = northern Ireland, northern England, Scottish highlands

Yankees = East Anglia

Delaware and Philadelphia area = England's north midlands

[Savage Beast]

Everybody who is born in America is a native American.

English native < French natif < Latin nativus = English born < Latin nasci (passive voice) to be born

[onedoug]

Except that there was no cannibalism of record engaged in by Southerners.

s, ping.

[rob777]

Frankly I am not interested in labels that define individuals according to group affiliation. That is what multiculturalism is all about.

[dcwusmc]

I agree wholeheartedly! I also speak as one whose ancestors came at various times BEFORE the founding of the nation (including those who came on the Mayflower), so, though born a yankee, I am a Southerner by choice and a Proud Native American by birth!

[a fool in paradise]

I certainly can lay no claim to the nationality of a country I’ve never visited, that is 3 generations removed from my own, and who’s language I can neither read, nor write, nor speak.

[reagan_fanatic]

I was born in Iowa and have lived in the Midwest all of my life, so I guess that makes me a Yankee.

My Mother was born in Georgia, lives in the Midwest and retains her Southern culture and heritage. I have a great deal of love and respect for Southerners. I also appreciate where I grew up and where I now live.

Quite frankly, I wish people would quit fighting a 145 year-old war and knock it off with all of this childish North vs South crap. There are much bigger fish to fry.

[Osage Orange]

Only if white Zimbabweans living here..can be called African American’s.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

My family has been in the same area of Hanover County since the early 1600’s. Generation after generation of ordinary farmers. Some were educated, some were not. But they loved the land, a love my grandfather passed on to me. Call me crazy (my family does)I have always been able to feel this history of the land.

But does that connection make me a Native American? Not even close.

The Virginia Tribes are still trying to undo the damage of Walter Ashby Plecker.

---

“....Plecker saw everything in black and white. There were no other races. There was no such thing as a Virginia Indian. The tribes, he said, had become a “mongrel” mixture of black and American Indian blood.

Their existence greatly disturbed Plecker. He was convinced that mulatto offspring would slowly seep into the white race. “Like rats when you’re not watching,” they “have been sneaking in their birth certificates through their own midwives, giving either Indian or white racial classification,” Plecker wrote...”

source: http://www.manataka.org/page1275.html

---

I have too much respect for the Tribes of Virginia than to even consider such a silly premise.

[x]

If someone could create a time machine, and we could go back to the 1890s, we would tell our Southern ancestors to stop those European immigrants from getting off their boats at Ellis Island.

Or go back in time to tell the Powahatan and Nottaway what they were getting into in 1607.

Because Southerners are pioneers and not immigrants, they deserve to be described as "Native Americans".

By that logic the Boers were "Native Africans" and heck, those immigrants who came here one hundred years ago were themselves "pioneers" of a sort.

Maybe the concept of "Native American" is a dubious one all the way around, but the idea that Southerners qualify in a way that others don't is nonsensical.

Some Northerners do dislike Southerners, and vice versa. But it looks to me like what people dislike are chauvinists, people who go on and on about why their region is better.

[fortheDeclaration]

I think the Indians would regard you as immigrants.

[Poser]

My great great great great great great great great grandfather Thomas Tuttle was born in New Haven in 1634. I guess that makes me a native as well.

I can’t claim to be a southerner but I did live in Charleston, SC for a year when I was in the Navy in 1971.

[Cvengr]

Who gave the land to the first native Americans?